As many might remember the Silk Road, an online black market in the darknet, was shut down in October 2013 when the FBI could finally hack through the site themselves and arrest vendors as well as the creator of the site who was in San Francisco at the time. While this was perceived as a large victory against the growing corruption in the virtual world in truth it was barely even a speed bump in the sales of illegal substances and products online, and if anything it raised crime. With almost a year since the incident, there have been almost 18 other sites to take the place of the silk road, with the top grossing site of the Silk Road 2.0 offering a whopping 47,000 different drug listings from vendors. To give a little insight towards the amount of sales that are being made on this site it is estimated that a quarter of the profit is approx 20 million. As this shows, while the name of the site may change or be disbanded the market has not budged a bit and will continue to be strong. But while names come and go, many have thought about keeping the Silk Road 2.0 stay around due to the key aspect of being able to rate each product. By being able to rate each product, it has ensured a quality product, as shown by FBI testing, leading to a safer market and less deaths due to drugs. In addition sites like the Silk Road 2.0 take drug trades off the street and reduce crime levels across the nation. So is it right to uphold the law when it may hurt society in the long run, or do they make and exception and help end both deaths and crimes due to drugs?
5 comments:
The problem is, even the "top" quality drugs are still dangerous, which is why they were made illegal in the first place. While I agree that breaking apart groups do cause smaller and less organised replacements to pop up, and that enforcement would only cause criminals to come up with smarter and more creative (and potentially more dangerous) ways to sell drugs, this is a better alternative than allowing massive online narco trade to run amok. Easier access to dangerous drugs is not a good idea. Take a local high school, it's not hard to find someone to hook you up with your fix, but only if you know the right people. Now imagine that everyone had that kind of access, but not to "light" stuff like weed or ecstasy, but shit like coke and crack and meth and heroin being available to every invincible freshman and stressed junior with an internet connection. OD central. Not only would online access be extremely harmful, but it would undermine the War on Drugs altogether since the anonymity of the internet would allow people to become drug dealers as a viable and safe career. I believe that we need to crack down on this trade (heh get it?), and force the dealers to have to work extremely hard and earn every inch in order to continue their shady dealings.
Such illegal drug trading is better on the internet, rather than the street. If you desire, you could easily avoid most exposure to such activities. In order to get in touch with these Silk Road-like vendors, one has to deliberately install the Onion, and look for the URLs. You can avoid doing such things fairly easily. And if you do use a dangerous drug and get harmed by it, you are fully responsible for those actions. Sidenote: the internet can be a frightening place, and should be used responsibly... Just to point out the obvious.
The argument that online drugs may ensure a quality product doesn't eliminate the danger that comes with drug usage, as Antony mentioned. If anything the online ratings might merely work to weed out the dealers whose products aren't as good. While this may decrease the number of deaths or side-effects caused by impure drugs it would not guarantee that drug users are safe, as they would still be under the influence of mind-altering substances that diminish good judgment and decision-making. The online rating system is also far from a guarantee of safety; not every batch (is that what it would be called...?) of drugs an online dealer sells would necessarily come from the same place or have gone through the same process, so one person's experience could still be dramatically different from another person's. In terms of lessening crime, I do think online drug dealing might slightly reduce the amount of violent crime associated with the sale of street drugs across the country, but let's not forget that buying and selling drugs is still a crime in itself. Because of this, I don't see a change in the FBI's approach to the online drug trade unless the laws regarding drugs were to change.
Well for starters having this be on the internet could be potentially worse than actual interactions with a dealer. The internet has a whole spew of items across it. So some kid thinking he's going on to his favorite cat meme website might stumble on to this, and then it could escalate from there. And like Antony and Elias said higher ratings does not equal safer products. Also if a first time user gets his fix through this method, that person may not know how to properly use the drug and could cause an accident. For the crime issue, really it just gives everyone the ability to hide the fact that they use/have drugs by using a non super shady method of obtaining them.
@Anthony
"Now imagine that everyone had that kind of access, but not to "light" stuff like weed or ecstasy, but shit like coke and crack and meth and heroin being available to every invincible freshman and stressed junior with an internet connection. OD central."
We don't have to imagine-- that's the world we live in. YOU can order any of this "shit" at any time. You (presumably) haven't. Aragon is not "OD central."
In response to Diba's question, it doesn't matter what the state does. The SR1 incident occurred due to sloppiness, not an inherent flaw in the system.
Assuming that the current Silk Road leaders have learned from the mistakes of their predecessor, a FBI seizure would be nothing but a minor inconvenience. All communications can be encrypted, so customer data/identities are safe, and centralized escrow has been (mostly) eliminated, so (most of) the Bitcoin would be inaccessible to the attackers.
Silk Road 3.0 would be up by the end of the week.
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